Tuesday, November 22, 2005

First Solo Nav

On the twentieth I went for my first solo navigation flight. I went from Jandakot to Bunberry, then to Collie and back. The whole flight was a two hour sortie. Total distance is about two hundred nautical miles. The track that I followed was along side the coast for half of the excursion and the other half was over the Darling Range.

I was a bit nervous as the procedures were still new to me. This first solo sortie is designed so that the cadet wouldn't infringe any airspace if the cadet get's lost and easily get back to Jandakot via the coastal way.

I'm still amazed that through calculations and weather forecasts, we can track almost directly to our destination. When we take winds into account we can't point the plane to where we want it to fly to. We have to point the plane slightly into the wind to counter the forces the wind puts to push the plane off course. To date I've done two solo sorties and in one occasion I had to point the nose 15 degrees off the track.